Study's reference (author, country, date)



UNICEF Toolkit on Diversion and Alternatives to Detention 2009

Compilation of evidence showing positive victim/survivor impact [1]

Important note: The selection of studies included here is by no means comprehensive. This document merely aims to give a brief overview of the types of evidence available in relation to victim/survivor impact. It should be noted that the studies included here are all from North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe (Netherlands and UK/Northern Ireland). Inconsistencies in the way summaries have been compiled reflect the limitations of the desk review and the data available in the original source material. Those wishing to gain a more in-depth view of this topic should refer back to the original sources for more detail.

|Source |Author, country, date |Brief description of methodology |Findings in relation to victim/survivor impact |

|Restorative justice through victim–offender mediation: A multi-site|Author: Umbreit, M. (1998) |Victim-offender mediation, a process which allows crime victims to meet fact-to-face with the |“He found a high level of client satisfaction with the process among |

|assessment. |Country: USA/meta-analysis |offender to talk about the impact of the crime and to develop a restitution plan, is the |victims (79% were satisfied) compared with a comparison group who did |

|Western Criminology Review, 1. Retrieved April, 2004, |Date: 1998 |oldest and most empirically grounded restorative justice intervention. This article reports on|not participate in face to face mediation (57% were satisfied). A |

| | |a study of victim-offender mediation in four sites with juvenile offenders and their victims, |higher percentage (81%) of offenders successfully completed their |

|from | |along with related studies. Victim-offenders meeting replace court hearings the there is an |restitution plan after mediation compared with offenders who did not |

| | |emphasis placed on victim receiving answers and becoming involved in developing restitution |take part in mediation (58%). Levels of fear of further victimisation |

| | |plan for offender. Offenders also take direct responsibility for behavior and learn full |were also reduced, from 23% of victims before mediation to 10% after |

| | |impact and become accountable. Specific outcome measures examined include victim and offender |mediation. Fewer victims were upset about the crime after mediation |

| | |satisfaction with the referral of their case to mediation; victim and offender satisfaction |(49%) than were before mediation (67%). Statistical significance was |

| | |with the outcome of mediation; victim and offender perception of fairness in the criminal |not given for these differences.”[2] |

| | |justice system response to their case through mediation; and victim fear of revictimization by| |

| | |the same offender following mediation. | |

|Interim Evaluation of the Northern Ireland Youth Conferencing |Authors: Helen Beckett, Catriona|The new youth conferencing initiative currently applies to offenders aged 10 to 16 years |Two-thirds of all offenders (65%) and victims (67%) stated that they |

|Scheme, Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of |Campbell, David O’Mahony, John |inclusive, who reside within the Greater Belfast or Fermanagh/Tyrone regions of Northern |felt the plan was proportionate to the offence (‘neither too hard nor |

|Law, Queen’s University, Belfast (Dec. 2004) |Jackson & Jonathan Doak |Ireland. Most offences are eligible for inclusion in the scheme however offences with a |too soft'). |

| |Country: U.K./Northern Ireland |mandatory penalty of life imprisonment are excluded. | |

|: 2004 |There are two routes by which a young person can be referred to a youth conference: via the |All victims unequivocally stated that they would recommend the |

|uth_conferencing_scheme.pdf | |Public |initiative to another person in their position, as did all but two |

| | |Prosecution Service (PPS) or via a court. In either instance, referral is dependent not only |offenders. |

|General: | |on the offender’s admission of guilt (or, in the case of court, a finding of guilt) but also | |

| | |their voluntary consent1. | |

| | | | |

| | |The findings are based on research conducted by the Institute of Criminology and Criminal | |

| | |Justice at Queen’s University, Belfast and focus on the functioning of the scheme in the early| |

| | |months of its operation, from its inception on the 1st December 2003 until the 31st August | |

| | |2004. Findings relate only to the 50 referrals received and processed by the Youth Conference | |

| | |Service prior to 31August 2004. | |

|Evaluation of the Northern Ireland Youth Conference Service, |Authors: Catriona Campbell, |185 conferences were observed. Structured interviews were completed with victim and offender |In terms of proportionality, young people (72%) and victims (69%) |

|Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, School of Law, |Roisin Devlin, David O’Mahony, |conference participants, while semi-structured interviews were employed with both victim and |believed the plan to be ‘neither too hard nor too soft’. |

|Queen’s University, Belfast (Oct. 2005) |Jonathan Doak, John Jackson, |offender non-participants and other key stakeholders such as Magistrates, police and | |

| |Tanya Corrigan & Kieran McEvoy |representatives of the Public Prosecution Service (PPS). |The vast majority of young people, (86%) and victims, (88%), would |

|: U.K./Northern Ireland | |recommend a conference to a person in a similar situation. |

|erence_service.pdf |Date: Oct. 2005 | | |

|Conferencing: A New Approach for Juvenile Justice in Honolulu |Author: Lorenn Walker |The Honolulu Police Department conducted an experimental diversion project for first time |Results show that victims were highly satisfied with the process and |

|International Institute of Restorative Practices. |Country: USA (Hawaii) |juvenile offenders in the City and County of Honolulu. Juveniles were diverted to restorative |conferenced juveniles arrested for non-violent offenses did not |

| |Date: 2002 |justice conferences instead of traditional diversion programs. This study analyzed the effects|escalate to arrests for violent crimes, while juveniles who |

|Originally appeared in the Federal Probation Journal, Volume 66, | |of conferencing on participant satisfaction, offender agreement compliance, and recidivism. |participated in traditional programs had a significantly higher arrest|

|No. 1, June, 2002. | |Between March and September 2000, 102 first-time juvenile offenders participated in |rate for subsequent violent crimes. |

| | |conferences instead of traditional police diversion programs in the City and County of | |

| | |Honolulu. Eighty-five conferences were held for the 102 offenders (co-defendants participated | |

| | |together in single conferences). | |

|Morris A and G Maxwell (1998) Restorative Justice in New Zealand: |Authors: G. Maxwell & A. Morris |Conducted several studies of Family Group Conferences (FGCs) and their effectiveness in |Morris and Maxwell (1998) concludes that: |

|Family Group Conferences as a Case Study, Western Criminology |Country: New Zealand |restorative justice programs. |victims were willing and able to participate in restorative justice |

|Review, 1(1), |Date: (1998 1999, 1999c) | |processes |

|Maxwell G (1999) Research on Conferencing: Researching | |Long term outcomes for a young person attending a FGC are likely to be most positive in terms |a significant proportion of victims felt positively toward the process|

|Re-offending, in A Morris and G Maxwell (eds.) Youth Justice in | |of offending if the conference is able to lead to remorse without shaming either the parents |and were satisfied with the outcomes |

|Focus: Proceedings of an Australasian Conference, Wellington, NZ: | |or the young person. The particular elements of FGC which seem important are: |offenders were held accountable |

|Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington. | |that the process seems fair to parents and involves young people in it and in the decisions |reconviction rates were no worse and possibly better than for |

| |arising from it |court-based samples |

|-papers.aspx | |that neither the young person or their parents are made to feel like a bad person at the FGC |factors in restorative justice processes may be linked to a lower |

|Maxwell G and A Morris (1999c) Understanding Re-offending: Final | |that the young person feels remorseful at nor after the FGC (Maxwell 1999, Maxwell and Morris |probability of reconviction. |

|Report, Wellington, NZ: Institute of Criminology, Victoria | |1999c). | |

|University of Wellington. | | | |

| | | |

|eports.aspx | | | |

|Making amends: Final evaluation of the Queensland community |Authors: H. Hayes, T. Prenzler, |Three pilot programs were initiated in April 1997. The programs shared common aspects of |Results demonstrated that the program has been highly successful with |

|conferencing pilot. Brisbane: Centre for Crime Policy and Public |& R. Wortley |restorative justice, but each had distinctive features in terms of structure and operation. |respect to its core goal of victim-offender reparation. Participant |

|Safety, Griffith University. |Country: Australia |The evaluation used data obtained through initial and follow-up surveys of program |satisfaction levels were consistently high across a range of |

| |Date: 1998 |participants, as well as information contained in client files and maintained by the Juvenile |conferencing issues. During the average of 3.4 months from the initial|

| | |Justice Branch's data management system. Data were also obtained from the Queensland Police |survey to the follow-up survey, levels of participant satisfaction |

| | |Service and the Children’s Courts regarding trends in cautioning and court appearances. |remained high. |

| | |Financial data were provided by the State Coordinator of community conferencing and the pilot | |

| | |coordinators to permit analysis of the cost-efficiencies associated with each pilot site. | |

|Diversion of Shoplifters in the Halt Procedure: Evaluation of a |Authors: M. Kruissink & C. |A study evaluates an experimental program to reduce shoplifting in Rotterdam. The program |The storekeepers were cooperative and their experiences with the |

|Rotterdam Experiment The Hague, NETH: Netherlands Ministry of |Verwers |offers juvenile shoplifters referred by police the opportunity to avoid prosecution if they |youths were positive. |

|Justice, 92p. |Country: Netherlands |work satisfactorily for the injured party. It is an extension of the popular Halt program for | |

| |Date: 1990 |vandalism. Of 153 juvenile shoplifters referred to the project, 143 were diverted. In almost | |

|* Could not obtain original study | |all cases, the offender's work took place in the shops where they had been caught. | |

|The implementation of group conferencing in juvenile justice in |Authors: Griffiths, M. |Study reflects three evaluations of group conferences over five years. Methodologies included:|Families are happy with process and, in the follow-up contact which |

|Victoria, paper presented at the Restoration for Victims of Crime |Country: Australia |observation of Group Conferences by the researchers; tracking the outcomes for young people, |was made with victims, most expressed satisfaction with their |

|Conference convened by the Australian Institute of Criminology, |Date: 1999 |victims and family who have been involved in a Group Conference for 12 months post-conference;|participation, and again expressed the sentiments that it helped them |

|Melbourne, September 1999. | |comparing recidivism with a similar probation group, over a 12 month period, post sentence; |“get off their chests” the impact of the crime and its consequences. |

| | |obtaining qualitative data from participants in the conferences including the young people, | |

| | |parents, other community members, victims, police and legal representatives and Convenors; | |

| | |interviewing key stakeholders from other relevant services, the legal system and government | |

| | |departments; undertaking a literature review; analyzing the costing through an activity | |

| | |costing framework and comparing this with the cost of probation; focus groups held with young | |

| | |people who have been through the program. | |

|Youth justice conferencing and re-offending, revised paper |Authors: Hayes, H. & Daly, K. |This study focuses on a sample of 89 conferences. It draws from conference observations and |Analysis indicates that although about one quarter of the young people|

|presented at the Australian and New Zealand |Country: Australia |official police data to explore the relative importance of conference dynamics and offender |were changed by the conference process toward more law-abiding |

|Society of Criminology 16th annual meeting, |Date: 2001 |characteristics in predicting future offending. The reoffending data comes from an 8-12 month |behavior, the victims who attended the conference were skeptical. |

|Melbourne, February 2001. Revised version: | |follow-up period. There was no comparison with a control group in non-restorative programs. |However, close to 90% thought the government should keep family |

| | |conferencing. |

|r17.pdf | | | |

|McLaren K (2000) Tough is Not Enough: Getting Smart about Youth |Author: Kaye McLaren |Survey of studies which documents general conclusions on what works and what hasn’t in the |→Encouraging meetings and dialogue between victim and offender appears|

|Crime: A review of research on what works to reduce offending by |Country: Survey/meta-analysis |past. |promising, particularly when trained mediators are present. |

|young people, Ministry of Youth Affairs, New Zealand. |Date: 2000 | | |

|Maxwell G, A Morris and T Anderson (1999) Adult Pre-trial |Authors: Maxwell, Morris and |Outcome evaluation of two local diversion programmes -- Project |The main features of Project Turnaround were: |

|Diversion: Supplementary Evaluation, Wellington, NZ: Crime |Anderson |Turnaround in Invercargill and Te Whanau Awhina in Auckland -- list the components that make |→confronting offenders with the consequences of their offending, both |

|Prevention Unit, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and |Country: New Zealand |up each (Maxwell, Morris and Anderson 1999). Both interventions started with a meeting between|for victims and themselves |

|Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington. |Date: 1999 |community representatives, the offender and family and the victim to decide on a plan of |→having the victim present during this wherever possible |

| |action to reduce future offending. Offenders were referred by the Court to the interventions. |→focussing on reparation to the victim and the community |

|eports.aspx | |While the projects were officially directed at adult offenders, 33 percent of people on | |

| | |Project Turnaround and 50 percent on Te Whanau Awhina were aged 17-19 years, making it |The Te Awhina Whanau diversion programme was similar, except that it |

| | |appropriate for conclusion here. |dealt mainly with Maori offenders and involved victims in a face to |

| | | |face meeting with offenders far less often. It also took place on the |

| | | |marae, with the meetings with offenders being held in the wharenui |

| | | |(meeting house). It included: |

| | | |→confronting offenders with the consequences of their offending for |

| | | |victims, for themselves and for the Maori community, and vigorously |

| | | |challenging them about their behaviour and lifestyle |

| | | |→making plans to recompense the victim and community |

|The Effectiveness of Restorative Justice |Authors: Latimer, J., Dowden, |This meta-analysis took a sample of 35 studies that looked into recidivisms rates, victim and |[Conclusions on victim satisfaction missing from original desk review |

|Practices: A Meta-Analysis, Department of |C., & Muise, D. |offender satisfaction, and restitution completion. Each study used control groups to measure |summary]. |

|Justice, Canada. |Country: Canada |the outcomes. | |

| |Date: 2001 | | |

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